As I mentioned here earlier last week, my father’s been diagnosed with cancer. And while the prognosis is pretty good it’s still a scary prospect, at least for those of us that have never dealt with it in any way before. I was pretty freaked out for a few days there while the news settled in. A lot of you left some very kind, supportive comments and sent some very thoughtful e-mails — I just wanted to take a moment here and thank you for all of your thoughts and words.

My sister left a pretty great comment herself, saying

… We just gotta keep in mind our Dad is a BAD ASS!!! He told us he had cancer in one breath and in the next told us “I’m gonna beat this shit”. The cancer is aggressive but so is our family.

My Dad sounds pretty upbeat about it, himself. When I called him to ask how he was doing, nervously, tentatively, tiptoeing around a potentially sensitive topic, he just said

Well, I threw my back out a few days ago, I’m going blind, and I’ve got cancer. Otherwise, I’m feeling pretty good.

He sounds good, actually. He’s just going into treatment confident and upbeat, getting his P.M.A. together and gearing up. I’ve got minor guilt here, as the kid who moved off to the big faraway city while his family suffers, but that’s kinda more my load to tote. I’m going to head down for an extended visit once they figure out a treatment schedule — but for right now, this day, this moment, things don’t sound too bad.

As my girlfriend, who is herself a cancer survivor says

We’re all going to go out sometime. Cancer patients just have more detailed information.

Thanks again for all your thoughts …

I lay in bed in Brooklyn yesterday afternoon, staring up at the ceiling and watching the sunlight fade from the room. I couldn’t nap, couldn’t rest. A creature had taken up residence in my throat and chest. I imagined it to be black and very hairy, with large leathery wings. It wasn’t quite a bird and wasn’t quite a mammal, just this hairy winged thing, like a shaggy, greasy bat.

It moved around, pacing between my uvula and heart, shuffling and trying to stretch its wings. I imagined what it would feel like when the shaggy bat burst past my lips and lifted off, cutting ragged figure-8s around the paper lamps hanging from my ceiling.

Smithfield Ham is a meat like no other. A close cousin to Italian prosciutto, Smithfield ham is the meat of peanut-fed hogs, salt-cured and hickory smoked for a minimum of six months in the corporate limits of Smithfield, Virginia — home to my grandparents, aunt and uncle. Smithfield ham is drier and more thickly cut than supple, subtle prosciutto. Compared to Smithfield ham, prosciutto is the damp rag used to wipe a hog farmer’s work boots.

In a purely physical sense, Smithfield ham is terrible for you. The only way it could harm your heart more from a medical perspective would be if a surgeon were to slice your chest open and manually pack your arteries with wads of the stuff. From an emotional perspective, it is Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, love and forgiveness and bedtime stories all in one salty, fat-filled bite. Draped over a handmade biscuit with butter, it is also Prozac, Lithium and THC.

The bat flapped tireless, frustrated laps up and down my throat all last night, all this morning, in the cab to La Guardia, on the plane and all the way through the airport. It wouldn’t come out, and it was getting hairier by the hour, so hairy it got heavy when it settled on my chest to tongue its wet wings clean.

I keep waiting for the real grief to happen, but I just feel numb. I feel like I’m made out of balsa wood or something — soft and flexible, but easily shattered. All I want to do is read. I am an Easy Reader of epic proportions on a normal day, but now I am positively EATING words. I finished “Bonfire of the Vanities” on the plane and started right in on Haruki Murakami’s “Dance Dance Dance.” I was able to take a break from reading and joke around with my dad and sister while we shopped for funeral suits this afternoon, but after reading Pop-Pop’s obituary in the local paper, I couldn’t stop. It was all I could do not to wad the newspaper up and stuff it in my mouth — knocked out the front page, local section, comics and started in on the classifieds by the time we pulled up to my aunt and uncle’s house.

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Behind that adorable black face, behind those sweet mournful eyes lies the soul of an unapologetic shit-eater.

For real.

That is not a metaphor. She’s gone from stealing fruitcake and puking it under the tree last Christmas to full-blown coprophagia, gobbling it right up from between dead leaves on the ground at night. Cold and hard or piping hot and still steaming, she doesn’t care and she does it quick, too, too quick to catch sometimes. She just can’t help herself.

Layla’s my sister Jess’s dog, half-beagle and half lab with incurable separation anxiety. She was taken from her mother too young, and consequently has massive incurable anxiety. Jess has tried training camps, reading dog books, everything. Nothing works. Every time Jess is gone for a little while, Layla overindulges in something she shouldn’t: fruitcake, shoes, a purse, now fecal matter.

All training methods exhausted, my sister now just spoils the dog completely rotten, talking to her in a high, squealing voice, carrying her in her arms like a large infant and allowing the dog to “kiss” her directly on the lips.

A few weeks ago, Layla vomited a five-inch turd onto my parents’ living room carpet. My mom called Jess up immediately to report the news, saying only

“Your dog has vomited a massive turd onto the carpet. Yes, a turd. Go ahead and let her lick your lips again. As a concerned mother, I hope you’ve got good health insurance,”

and hung up.

Such was the climate of the household this Thanksgiving. Everyone was exhausted and frustrated with this new habit, this repugnant fetish for a newly repulsive creature that’s far too cute to kick.

Jess and I spent Thanksgiving day over at my aunt and uncle’s taking care of my grandparents. They moved in sometime last summer for a few weeks while my grandpa recuperated from an operation, and it’s become clear that they’re in no shape to live independently. My grandpa’s 88 years old with congestive heart failure, kidney failure and diabetes. He needs a walker to get around now and can’t lift his legs by himself.

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I’ve written about my mother on here before — and words are really failing me here. But this is my mother on her wedding day. I think she is younger than I am now:

In this photo, my mom is actively teaching me how to love the way she does: the right way. She hasn’t stopped. And in return, I haven’t stopped being grateful.

I went home this weekend to visit my mom and grandma … my mom’s mom. We took my grandparents out for ice cream, which holds special significance for me. It was perfect. The day was sunny and warm and my grandpa was feeling good, which had my grandma feeling great. Daro’s a bit of a pistol, and she’s not afraid to just touch somebody’s motorcycle when she’s in a good mood:

The ice cream parlor had sugar-free butter pecan ice cream, which thrilled my grandpa no end. My grandma tore up her sundae, too. Here’s my mom and grandmother enjoying their ice cream:

It’s more or less impossible to shop for my grandma. She’s got her husband and kids that happily take care of them both — no replacing that. But there’s a million reason her kids and grandkids want to take care of her, and I thought I’d share one of mine.

In 1984, I made the severe mistake of reading the Creepshow comic book, written by Stephen King and illustrated by horror master Bernie Wrightson — to my fragile little mind, the most compelling and terrifying stack of paper and staples ever created. Now I love that stuff, but at that time, bedtime was freaking CANCELLED until further notice. My grandmother, in her wisdom, slept in my room every night for a week until I could settle down, even though she knew I knew I had brought that terror on myself.

Love, real love, is made of a million tiny kindnesses that the giver forgets immediately and the recipient always remembers. I wrote down my memory of that event for my grandma and gave it to her for Mothers’ Day — you can see it here if you want:

There’s no real conclusion, no big thought to wrap this up. Just love and gratitude, which anyone know are way too big for a tight closing sentence.